Madam Speaker, I would agree strongly with the hon. member that she is confused. In fact she is so confused that I was barely able to understand the last half of that intervention.
However I will comment on the initial point which I think was important, and that is the issue of constitutional change and when and how we should pursue it.
Our party did say during the election campaign, as did the government, that Canadians were not interested in discussions of comprehensive constitutional change at this time. I would certainly agree with that. I think our priorities should be elsewhere.
Unfortunately we have to face the reality we have here. We have a party in the House which day after day is talking about the most dramatic and wide-ranging constitutional changes possible and that is the disintegration, separation, division, redivision of the federal state into two completely separate states, one which would presumably be a unitary state in Quebec and the other which as yet is undefined.
We hear this daily. We are heading into an election in Quebec where this will be an issue. Of course the separatists do not want to describe this as constitutional change because they realize it would immediately raise in the minds of the population of Quebec all the complexities and difficulties that are involved in that. The fact is that Quebecers are going to be asked very shortly to discuss constitutional change once again and to discuss it in the context of all the problems that exist with federalism.
We recognize those problems are there. We advocate some solutions to them. I am merely pointing out in my statement that we do have some constitutional perspectives here. We also have some things we would like to change about the country that can be pursued outside the constitutional framework.
The whole purpose of the motion while obviously not entering into constitutional negotiations is to raise the fact that there are alternative constitutional perspectives, including reforming ones, that do not require the kind of upheaval that separatism would entail.